Evan McKenzie on the rise of private urban governance and the law of homeowner and condominium associations. Visit evanmckenzie.wikispaces.com for my published articles and services.

Friday, May 14, 2004

WSOCTV.com - Special Reports - Legislator Looks At Changes To Homeowners AssociationsCHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Homeowners associations are filing liens and threatening to foreclose on the houses of their own neighbors in communities all over Charlotte. They're doing it legally to members who are late paying their homeowners association dues. Rick Jasinski is one of dozens of people who contacted Eyewitness News, complaining that state law gives homeowners associations too much authority. "It just seems the power they have, it just seems like they've got a little more power than they should," Jasinski said.Homeowners associations have the power to foreclose on homes because the state legislature in Raleigh passed laws that make the foreclosures legal. But after Eyewitness News brought its investigation to Raleigh, some legislators say it's time to take a closer look at how far homeowners associations can go to collect their dues.---------------------
Here's the typical pattern. The legislature usually decides it's time to convene a special select committee to research the issues and propose a few bills about closing the barn door...while the horse is about three counties away.

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

SB 1682 Senate Bill - Bill AnalysisThis bill would reform HOA forec.osure in California. It would prohibit foreclosure for delinquent assessment amounts of less than $2500, leaving the association recourse to small claims court or filing a lien. For amounts over that, nonjudicial foreclosure is still available but the bill creates a homestead exemption and a redemption period.
My understanding, from Fred Pilot, is that this is headed for the Senate floor.

"I simply love the monorail," he says. Driving under the city's old one-mile monorail on Fifth Avenue, he would cheer when a train passed above the sunroof. He voted yes on the 2002 initiative to build a new 14-mile monorail from West Seattle to Ballard. Then he volunteered for the project, answering questions at Bumbershoot and neighborhood festivals. Inshetski bought a second-floor condominium along the route on California Avenue Southwest in West Seattle last June — at a time when the agency was publishing verdant visions of a train soaring above the center of the street through a canopy of trees. What he didn't know was that the final plan would permit trains to pass as close as 6½ feet from the bay windows at his building. He said overhead tracks would block the only sunlight into the apartments of Inshetski and many of his neighbors in the Serrano, a 34-unit condominium. Now Inshetski is considering whether to join a campaign to repeal the monorail plan."They affected not just all the residents, but one of their most faithful workers," he says. "If they could do that to a volunteer, then how would other people feel?"

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Proving once again that there is a Supreme Being making the big Karmic Justice Decisions up there.

Montreal Gazette - $7 billion Canadian tax dollars at workA routine safety test at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport went monumentally wrong after an airport employee placed explosives in a passenger's luggage, but failed to remove them before he left the airport. In an effort to test sniffer dogs at the airport Friday, an employees slipped TNT, hidden in a jar of jam, into a passenger's luggage, instead of other baggage normally used during tests. Before the package could be removed, the passenger, who arrived on an international flight, picked up his luggage, passed through customs and security checks, and left. It was only when he arrived at a friend's house in Magog that he discovered the package, labelled "dynamite," and called police, who contacted the bomb squad...Since the World Trade Centre attacks, the federal government has spent more than $7 billion to upgrade national security.

About Me

I am a professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and an adjunct professor at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago. Nothing contained in this blog represents the opinions of UIC or John Marshall, and nothing you see here is legal advice. You can reach me at ecmlaw@gmail.com